Returning empty deposit bottles is a pain.
All that sorting, schlepping and feeding
the bottle return machines, and wow
you've got a whole 95¢.

Bottle Deposit Slot Machines add a new,
nearly exciting dimension. Insert the
bottle, grab the lever, give it a yank, and
watch the wheels spin
in the window. Two
lemons and a watermelon--nada. Three
cherries--jackpot.

The odds and payouts would mirror those
of the nickel and dime slot machines, with
a voucher payable at the register. And
then there's the machine owner's take,
which pays for the machines and yields a
profit.

Now, if we can just get the deli counter to
provide free drinks and hors d'oeuvres . . .

Haven't seen any machines locally (no deposit on cans around me), but in every deposit state that I've lived in, there have been machines. Usually, they scan the bar code to see if it's an acceptable can.

There are extra charges on bottles to provide an incentive to recycle. This will get gamblers and degenerate gamblers (the worst kind of gamblers) recycling, but why would the rest of you save your cans when 9 of 10 times you'll get nothing back. How bout just the option of cash value or a round of slots.

//Except the machine will have to be huge, or you will have to empty it constantly. Even a 100 beer bottles take up quite a bit of room!//

The machine crushes the glass and even separates the clear glass from the colored ones for easier recycling. The ones for plastic bottles actually kind of shred them, I guess to let the air out if you left the cap on. So they hold quite a bit.

// remember seeing a recycling game (on TV) where kids were shooting their empty soda cans out of pneumatic cannons//
[half], That was a few Earth-day episodes of "Wild and Crazy Kids." [Afroassault] can tell you all about that show.

Personally, I think it's cool that there are still people who can type "BDSM" and not immediately read it That Way. :) Anyway, as for the idea, it's brilliant! It could also work to encourage electronics recycling.

What if you'd still receive the usual fee minus 5%, and you have a 1 in 100 chance to win five times the usual fee instead? It would even out for the machine owner, wouldn't cost too much to implement and could still be an incentive to recycle.

I'm SURE this has been baked here in New Zealand, years ago. For cans. I remember at BP petrol stations, a big machine - you didn't win cash, but you had a chance to get a voucher for a choc bar or soft drink.

//Recycling crushed glass is nearly pointless. It takes almost as much energy to remelt broken bottles as it does to make them from scratch.//

Reusing bottles is definitely preferrable in an ideal system, but recycled glass (cullet) is an essential part of making new glass, at least by some processes.
Furthermore, there _is_ apparently an energy saving: "Every metric ton (1,000 kg) of waste glass recycled into new items saves 315 kilograms (694 lb) of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere during the creation of new glass."